Mari must have fallen asleep again at some point while she was reading, as she wakes up once more to find that there’s not much left of the morning. At least this sleep was much more peaceful than the last.

 

She’s glad to have gotten the extra rest as well, even if a grumbling in her stomach is telling her it’s more than time to get up now. She’s still a little shaken from the nightmare, but she’s calmed down a lot and feels ready to actually start the day, despite Martin’s screams of protest as he’s forced to get up as well.

 

Mari practically hops out of bed, even surprising herself with the small feat of agility, and heads to her bathroom ensuite to begin her morning routine. As someone who’s used to living in smaller apartments, having a bathroom so close to the bedroom isn’t as much of a novelty as it might be to people who have had a bit more luck than her, but she can certainly still appreciate how much nicer it is than the ones she’s used to. Just another reason she wants to keep this place so well maintained.

 

Today is Saturday, which means it’s time to remove the patch she stuck to the left side of her lower back before getting into the shower, and after getting out and drying off she grabs a fresh one for the week ahead out of her cabinet and sticks it to a similar spot on the right side. Now that she’s feeling refreshed, she heads down to the kitchen to grab some breakfast, realising as she goes down the stairs that she’s subconsciously moving at a pace that would normally leave her a bit winded.

 

Mari’s been noticing a lot of small things like this recently. For some reason, moving around seems to have become easier recently. It’s hard for her to place exactly what’s going on, the changes have been fairly subtle, after all, but it's almost like her body has gotten better at doing what she tells it to do. She can only assume it had something to do with all that extra practice she was doing to get better at using the jump spell, since she was very much exerting herself when using the magic, and she can definitely rule out physical exercise as it’s not something she’s into, that was always more Cassandra’s thing.

 

Whether this has been brought on by her magic or not, she’s not going to complain about it. She figures there are much worse side effects that could have come as a result of learning witchcraft, and even if she would like a solid answer about what’s caused it, not having to worry quite as much about her lungs when moving around is a very welcome change.

 

She says good morning to Naomi and Leona as she walks across the lobby, glad that they were able to start their duties without her, but more than anything else she’s relieved that no disasters seem to have arisen while she was sleeping. There have been a few attempts at teaching the dolls how to prepare food over the past week, but so far the results have been less than ideal, even something as simple as a bowl of cereal has produced some unexpectedly messy results. Considering how hungry she already is, she decides to forgo the lessons for today and just prepare a bowl herself, casually scrolling through her social media feed as she eats and takes her medication.

 

With her breakfast finished, she starts heading back to her bathroom to complete the rest of her morning routine when she feels a sensation while walking through the bedroom, like she’s picked up on a presence that shouldn’t be there. This sensation has become all too common since moving in, but before she has a chance to react, the sound of someone knocking on the front door plays in her head. She jumps to the entrance and opens the door to see a delivery van already speeding away, and a parcel sitting on the porch. It must be one of the packages she ordered online.

 

Mari sighs as she brings it inside, this event having served to remind her of just a few of the strange things going on with this house that she’s yet to get to the bottom of. Over the past few months she’s realised that she seems to have some sort of sense of things going on in and around the house, most notably when there’s someone besides her and the dolls on the premises. She figures it’s something to do with the magic that resides in the house, probably some sort of defence mechanism put in place by the witch that gave her the place. It might even be related to some of the things she’s experienced with the dolls, considering how she can hear people knocking on the door no matter where she is in the house, just like how she could hear Naomi sobbing in the kitchen from her bedroom the other day.

 

What’s even harder to understand is how her mail is able to find its way here while other delivery services don’t even recognise that the house exists at all. She started having her mail redirected to the post office after learning about that issue when she moved in, only to find that letters that had been sent out before then were arriving without any problems. There’s still so much she doesn’t know about this place, and she can only wonder how long it will take to learn all of its secrets.

 

For now though, she still needs to finish her routine, so she places the package on one of the tables in the lobby to open up later and goes about freshening up in the bathroom. Finally, with her teeth brushed, skin moisturised, and her hair roughly combed (It’s not like she’s going out anywhere today), Mari’s ready to properly start her day.

 

Now that she’s got a couple of days without work, she’d like to practise some magic again, maybe even learn a new spell, but before she gets started on that she needs to try and figure out what she can do about her dolls and all the trouble they’ve been causing, and there’s only one place she can think of to get that information.

 

She boots up her PC in the study, and heads to a web page that she’s now quite familiar with.

 

“Hey Dolly, you there?”

 

“Indeed this one is!” The cartoon helper states, using a hang glider to soar on screen. “How can this one help you today?” The doll lands, and the hang glider vanishes into thin air.

 

“My dolls have been causing some problems and I’d like to know what I could do about it, if you have any info that could help.”

 

“Ah, has one of them lost a limb? That sort of thing is pretty common. This one can order the materials you’d need for a replacement if you’d like.”

 

“No, it’s not that kind of problem. It’s probably a few different things, but the main problem is more of a… behavioural issue, I guess? I’m still not really sure what terminology to use when it comes to doll stuff.”

 

“Well, this one was only given knowledge to help witches make and repair dolls, if your problems are unrelated to that, then unfortunately this one won’t be of much help at all. You would likely need to seek out another witch for advice.”

 

Mari stops to think for a few seconds, partially about how Dolly continues to refer to her as a witch, and how she’s not sure if she’s quite ready to call herself that yet, but more importantly about whether or not this would be the time to call the one witch she knows, the one who put her in this situation in the first place. 

 

She did give Mari her contact details after all, but wasn’t that more for emergencies? She’s not sure if the current situation would warrant bothering her. Besides, wouldn’t it be better if she was able to take care of this without her help? Regardless of whether she actually wants to be a witch or not, if she can’t solve a problem like this without calling the other witch in, how would she ever be able to do things by herself when this place is eventually filled with dolls? How would she take care of herself? How would she take care of the dolls? How would she take care of Ca-

 

“Ahem.” Dolly draws Mari’s attention back to itself, no doubt able to tell that Mari isn’t sure what to do. “If you don’t have any witches you could contact, this one would recommend using the message board to connect with other witches that use this page.”

 

“Wait, this place has a message board?”

 

Dolly gestures towards one of the top corners of the page, but it appears to be little more than empty space.

 

“I don’t get it, is there meant to be something there?”

 

“This one recommends disabling your ad blocker.”

 

“Oh, sure thing.” Mari adds the site to her whitelist, and an image suddenly appears in the empty space with flashing text reading ‘MESSAGE BOARD’, and ‘TALK TO OTHER WITCHES’.

 

“What the hell?” Mari says in disbelief. “I thought this site ran on magic or whatever, why do ad blockers even do anything?”

 

“Some witches have complained about the flashing text, so we gave them this as a way to hide it.” Dolly explains cheerfully.

 

“You could just make it not flash though?”

 

“This one’s miss is very committed to the website’s aesthetic!”